Son'a Ideas

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 6:46 am

My side was more about debating the idea that Starfleet or the Klingons would attempt to prevent their expansion.

I'd prefer them beam heavy, with torp specials.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 6:49 am

I'd still like the FO team to take them in a completely different direction. Perhaps support ships?

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 6:50 am

...considering the Son'a are based around the Briar Patch...

No. The Briar Patch was established to be within Son'a space. It was NOT established to be the base/centre/majority of it.

which was established to be between Federation and Klingon space

Was it? When?

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 6:54 am

No. The Briar Patch was established to be within Son'a space. It was NOT established to be the base/centre/majority of it.

Nebulas are extremely large, and the Son'a can't even hang with the Tzenkethi or Talarians empire-wise, so I think it's a very safe guess.

Was it? When?

Enterprise, 4th season. The episodes with the Augments.

(also the case in Star Charts, which was published before and - being a reference work - is not considered authoritative canon.)

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 7:13 am

The Briar Patch is completely in Federation space and it's fairly close the Federation-Klingon border. Son'a controlled space is near the Cardassian Union and Talarian space. This is why the Son'a made a pact with the Federation in Insurrection because they had to cross into Federation space to get to Baku. After that poorly thought out plan failed they ended up joining the Dominion in hopes that they would defeat the Feds and have easy access to Baku.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 7:19 am

The Briar Patch is completely in Federation space and it's fairly close the Federation-Klingon border. Son'a controlled space is near the Cardassian Union and Talarian space. This is why the Son'a made a pact with the Federation in Insurrection because they had to cross into Federation space to get to Baku. After that poorly thought out plan failed they ended up joining the Dominion in hopes that they would defeat the Feds and have easy access to Baku.

Arg... I was about to say that actually.

All of that aside though, it seemed logical to have the Son'a as an available avatar for the Dominion due to their past alliance with them during the Dominion War (yes i watched Penumbra and remember it).  I think that a Son'a avatar should have more emphasis on supply gathering then the other Dominion avatars do though due to the overall nature of their original alliance with the Dominion.  Perhaps we could be given a station of some sort where you could gain supply over time or have a station where you can transfer so much of one resource into supply.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 7:27 am

I do recall Damar getting narky about having to send ships to the Son'a Outpost for defence, wondering why the Son'a can't just send their own.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 7:31 am

I do recall Damar getting narky about having to send ships to the Son'a Outpost for defence, wondering why the Son'a can't just send their own.

Because Riker blew 'em all up! 

But seriously, despite my own reservations, I know that the FO team can make the Son'a not suck if they put even a little effort into it, so I'm not that bothered

[Zulnak]

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 7:46 am

Last edited by Zulnak on June 3rd, 2011, 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm happy to see that my revivalposter after one year of silence force alot of ppl to post in here. But please come back to the topic. Since two pages the discussion seems to point in nowhere.

So here we go... Whenever the Devs or a Modder want to add more than two Avatars it seems the Son'A would be a topchoise for a third Dominion Avatar - isn't it?

So what other opportunities we have?

Delta- & Alpha-Dominion:

• try to seek out the benefits
• try to seek out the benefits

Original Dominion Races:

• Vorta = economically, strategically
• Jem'Hadar = tactical, good on boarding, overall offensiv shipstrength
• Founder= sneaky spying, may cause chaos and ships shooting each other
• Karemma = ehmm revive Tradingpost & Ships and there will fill this roll

Dominion and there Allies:

• Puretech = Dominion only style
• Breen = Torpy style
• Son'A = Pulsebased style

I like all of 'em! But I hav to say the biggest bandwidth of known ships we can get from the last one. And there were already some models out there on a2files I guess.

By the way we also can honor another old thread who is realy linked into this topic: here. And please don't grumble if something of this older formulation dont't come exactly with your view. There 's a lot of work in there and the main goal seems to be a inspiration for Modder or even force the Devs to make us a third Avatar for each Race someday (in the distant future).

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 8:29 am

Because Riker blew 'em all up! 

Nice.

But seriously, despite my own reservations, I know that the FO team can make the Son'a not suck if they put even a little effort into it, so I'm not that bothered

I presume anyone with some sense could make the Son'a better then how they were in Insurrection (anyone with any sense at all could probably make a better movie then Insurrection in general  ) I'm confident the Devs will make them play and feel different then the Breen avatar when they get around to it. 

Sticking with the Ketrecel White production that they were known for, I do like Dominus' idea of maybe having large scale production facilities replace the Synthesizers. The supplies would come in longer intervals but in larger burst amounts. I also like his idea that maybe they have access to less puretech Dominion ships. After all the Dominion only seem to place value in the Son'a because they can mass produce the White, wheres with the Breen they have a lot more focus because the Breen have a large competent military presence. I also presume in the FO storyline the Breen were probably the only race that harbored the Dominion left in the Alpha Quadrant so maybe they see more importance in the Breen as a "thank you for still helping us even though we totally ended up losing the war!"

All in all I think the Son'a should be a more economic based avatar as the Breen currently are the miltary powerhouse avatar of the Dominion. I also would like to see some nice pulses on those Son'a ships... 

Then again the other Alpha Quadrant power that allied with the Dominion was the Miradorn... maybe if they ended up as the fourth avatar they could get some nice pulses if the Son'a don't.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 10:47 am

I think a small cruiser or destroyer that is higher up then the Bug and Bomber would be a nice addition. Plus the supply emphasis would encourage me to play the Sona avatar more than the others.

I think the Sona would be a great addition to the Dominion, I like the ideas that Dominion avatars  be based on alliances rather than particular characters like the other species.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 5:43 pm

A small ship a step up from bombers & bugs that has ketracel... like the S2?

One of the Son'a avatar-specific bonuses should be a station that automatically generates supply (like the Borg's) so that a Son'a avatar player doesn't have to focus as much on the Dominion's cumbersome supply mining.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 6:32 pm

there is trouble matching the ds9 references of the sona to the insurrection references

apprarently they left the baku homeworld 100 years before insurrection. what they left with is unknown. the baku population was confined to 1 village, a few hundred people, capable of being transported away on a single ship. but yet they were advanced enough to build starships that equalled the ent e and understood data's fancy positronics. that would indicate they controlled mulitple worlds.

if we assume that they are just a bunch of brainboxes, they would still control their entire planet. and that planet makes them age really slowly, but presumably they still have sex and breed just as fast. yet their population appears to be incredibly tiny.

maybe we can explain this away by saying (like the ma baku article) that the original homeworld for that species was somewhere else. and that the people that formed the village were just an offshoot. that explains how they could be advanced but have a small population.

but then we know from the film that the sona split off from the villager baku, obviously unhappy about continuing to shun technology. which means that if we assume 1000 baku originally, and half of them become sona and run off, thats only 500 sona. which isnt much to start a large empire in 100 years with.

i agree that if 500 sona had those 2 battleships, they could bombard pre warp people from orbit and never leave their ship. and if these people were pacifists then its also possible they would surrender and become enslaved.

i think if 2 starships appeared in earth orbit and fired at us from orbit demanding our surrender, that we'd be more likely to surrender than be wiped out. at least then we could organise a resistance later. same with these little races, they might have resistance plans in the working to get rid of the sona.

but we still cant make it gel with ds9 about them having a fleet and multiple colonies. if 2 or 3 ships left 100 years previous. then enslaved a couple pre warp races, i dont think its reasonable that they could assemble many ships over the century. especially since untrained slaves arent exactly a shipyard crew or crew for the new ships. you would have to put in place education systems for the slaves. then build shipyards, then build ships. all while expanding to multiple colonies.

maybe if we make the simple adjustment that the sona split off more than 100 years ago. then they would have adequate time to establish themselves and have colonies. and the fleet in insurrection would be a smaller proportion of their overall fleet.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 7:15 pm

@Myles
Based on the ancestor story of the Baku, they originally descended from a technologically advanced space faring race. It can be assumed that this precursor race spanned multiple star systems and after they destroyed their homeworld they still had colonies scattered around with populations left. The Son'a could have returned to these colonies, or even their destroyed homeworld, and recovered technology and reintegrated with any survivors. Remember according to the Baku story they left before the homeworld was destroyed, so they might not even have confirmation that it was even destroyed at all. There's simply too many plot holes and horribly bad screenwriting in Insurrection to make any clear judgement about the Baku and Son'a. All we have to go off of is the words of a backwater pacifist people and the words of scary face-stretched men that look like monsters.
As Plinkett had also pointed out in his Insurrection review, the small size of the Baku population was ridiculously unbelievable considering they were a humanoid race in their prime for hundreds of years. If they are human-like in anyway, they should be having children left and right. This can also be said about the Son'a, whom no doubt had children once they left Baku. Also consider us Humans, an industrial species that has no interstellar technology and look at how fast our population grows each year, let alone a century.
The Romulan origin story is also fairly similar to the Son'a. A very small group of several hundred Vulcans left on pre-warp ships to the Romulas system, and within just a century or two managed to build up this large interstellar empire with cloaking technology. Considering the Romulans had even less then the Son'a to work with, I think the case of the Son'a building a niche empire in a short time is fairly acceptable.

posted on June 3rd, 2011, 7:18 pm

Did they say the original race killed their homeworld? I only recall mentioning them on the brink of self-annihilation, which is something a planet can survive.